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Friday, 20 March 2015

"Indeed" - Bibi Mk4 and the unraveling of the British Jewish consensus

The night before the election there was this exchange with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Interviewer:
"If you are prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be
established?"

Netanyahu: "Indeed".

One word and the British Jewish consensus was blown to pieces.

Three days later, after winning a comprehensive victory for his
Likud party and a fourth term as prime minister, Netanyahu had this apparent clarification for American television viewers:

"I don't
want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution,
but for that circumstances have to change."

In Britain, if you are a pro-Israel lobby group like We Believe
in Israel, or BICOM or the Zionist Federation you have a tricky time ahead. If
you are leading our religious or communal bodies from the United Synagogue to
Liberal Judaism and of course the Board of Deputies, then you are now in a very
serious fix.

Here's why.

Bibi is back and this time he's telling the truth.

And don't be fooled by any apparent discrepancy between the two
interviews.

When Bibi says "circumstances must change" he is in the
realm of messianic times, that distant horizon when the moon and stars are
aligned and all the Middle East is at glorious peace with itself. What Bibi
means is that it ain't gonna happen on his watch. It's all of a piece with the stumbling blocks he put in front of John Kerry for a year but now Bibi is being honest about it.

Over the last few years it has been possible (just about) for
Jewish communal leaders around the world, including Britain, to maintain the
illusion that the Israeli government wanted to see
peace and reconciliation with the Palestinian people.

Broadly speaking, this would be achieved through a two-state
solution. Two states for two peoples, side by side.

This is what the British government wanted, what the rest of the
EU wanted, what the United States wanted, what the United Nations wanted and what most Palestinians wanted.
It's also the position supported overwhelmingly by British Jews.

That consensus has allowed the Board of Deputies to develop a
policy on Israel that they can comfortably ask every parliamentary candidate
standing in Britain's General Election in May to sign up to, so maintaining a
broad cross party agreement on the issue.

The pro-Israel lobby groups in Britain have maintained the same
two-state line. It makes everyone sound reasonable and fair and progressive and
allows comfortable alignment with the Israeli government, all of the
Westminster political parties and the vast majority of British Jews.

In reality things are not quite so straight forward.

When you scratch the surface of all this unanimity you quickly
discover that there are vastly different ideas about what these two states
should look like. Where would the capital of a Palestinian state be? What
should happen to the Jewish Settlements and the exclusive resources that
service them on the West Bank? How much control would a Palestinian state have
over its own borders, airspace and internal security?

But to enable the consensus to hold together our communal and
religious leaders (and the lobby leadership too) have deliberately avoided
taking a clear public position on issues like the annexation of East Jerusalem,
the expansion of the Settlements and the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Instead of framing these issues as moral questions they have opted for
tribalism. They have for decades abdicated ethical responsibility by saying
that the brutal reality of a 50-year occupation is just detail to be negotiated by an
Israeli government.

It's a strategy that has created the appearance of community cohesion even if it lacks
moral backbone and disregards Jewish ethical tradition.

But with Netanyahu's new found honesty over the two-state
solution the consensus in Britain is about to
unravel. David Cameron might be happy to congratulate Netanyahu on his victory
and overlook the racist tone of his campaign but Likud's return to power has
just sparked a huge crisis in British Jewry.

The Board of Deputies' election manifesto is now at odds with
what will soon be the official Israeli policy - no to two-states, or at best,
'sometime never'. The same crisis goes for the current positions held by our
main religious denominations and even the British pro-Israel lobby groups.

The question they must all face is whether to acknowledge the
difference and adopt a critical stand against the Israeli government or realign
with Bibi and open divisions with the British government, the opposition
parties and indeed most British Jews.

So expect to see turmoil in the ranks of the Jewish
establishment, some soul searching among the rank and file and a clear
fracturing of publicly voiced Jewish opinions on Israel. And about time too.

However, if you have not locked yourself into uncritical support
for Israel and you have preferred to follow a Jewish tradition that has
informed universal human rights and international law, then Netanyahu Mk.4
leaves everything looking very much clearer.

The next few years will be easy to navigate.

Without considerable external pressure, both political and
economic, Israel will not stop Settlement expansion, will not dismantle the
separation wall, will not give up an inch of the Occupied Territories, will not
end the siege of Gaza. It certainly will not sit down and negotiate a peace
deal that looks remotely just to Palestinian eyes. Why should it while the rest
of the world allows its behaviour to continue without cost or consequence? And
God help the children of Gaza if Hamas dares to fire any more home-made rockets
in the general direction of the most powerful army in the region.

But with Netanyahu finally putting the two-state solution six
feet under, that necessary pressure is on the way.

It will come from European governments and it will come from
grass roots activists. The pressure will undoubtedly include boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And those activists will increasingly include Jews. Not
self-hating Jews but profoundly disillusioned Jews. It will come from Jews
looking for a new kind of Jewish leadership and hoping to protect their democratic and ethical ideals and rescue what's left of their Jewish heritage.

2 comments:

I hope you are right, Robert - I so hope you are right .... & everyone from all quarters, who has respect for their honourable Jewish heritage will start to speak out to change things in the Holy Land whether they live there or not. No world leadership has managed it - best it comes from within the Jewish heart now. I wish you all well with the endeavour and please know there are millions who are not Jewish, who wish yearn for a successful, fair and peaceful creation of two States, as much as you do. Blessings!

If not "self-hatred" (which always was a very strange insult, its usage apparently: "you hate what I demand that you love and so I'll say you hate yourself"), then at least serious regret should now be in order for Jews who have for so many years allowed themselves -- despite overwhelming evidence -- to suppose that Israel wanted a 'just and lasting peace' with the Palestinians.

Those experiencing such regret, and others who were never fooled in the first place, should work to bring pressure on Israel to remove its settlers and dismantle its settlements, end the blockade of Gaza, and tear down that wall.